Comments on: Parody is not license to be racist

By: Ed

Ed — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 19:16:10 +0000

It’s been too many days without a post from cyde. I was really looking forward to a post on this day that Obama became president. Come on Cyde, we miss you.
America seems to be changing and electing a “black and white” president is certainly a step in the right direction. Let’s see now how many years it will take for an atheist to be elected…

By: knacker

knacker — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:50:31 +0000

there actually are blue people, they’re some sort of indigenous people in the really high mountains I think in asia somewhere. their skin is blue because their veins cluster so close to the surface of their skin. it’s an adaptation for low air pressure, and they can exist and thrive at heights that normal white people can’t.

yellow people are usually jaundiced.

By: Ed

Ed — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:23:37 +0000

There was a very stupid discussion going on on imdb regarding the ethnicity of Olga Kurylenko, of all people… ( http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1385871/board/thread/94342427X ) Before most of the messages were deleted there were comments about her having black blood… The wonders of fake tan, oh well… Anyway, a Brazilian guy had a comment there saying something like: “here in Brazil we classify girls only as ugly or good looking, this one belongs to the second group”.
My point here is that the best way to deal with racism is to just ignore it. There’s no point in arguing about it.
Skin colour is just another of those inconsequential thing to make fun about, like religion… I don’t see anything wrong about a good funny joke about black people, yellow people, blue people or the like.
I did not bother listening to the song, so I won’t comment on it. If it makes fun of anybody then it’s up to them to say if they feel offended or not and then for it’s author to apologize if it went too far.
On another note, I’m still trying to understand American politics. Why would a political party that wants to be taken seriously, that has supposedly set itself out to run the country on behalf of all it’s citizens, distribute CDs with jokes? That doesn’t make any sense to me…

By: drinian

drinian — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:56:57 +0000

I'm sorry, using the word "negro," especially when this particular usage was originally popularized by the LA Times in an article written by a black man, does not automatically throw some sort of racist switch. Suggesting otherwise has a chilling effect on reasoned discussion of real issues of race in this country. Your comment implies a privileged vocabulary and set of topics that white people, by reason of their skin color, should not have access to. The "magic negro" is a real sociological term that, in fact, is more a criticism of white people than anything else. And, finally, my 85-year-old grandfather occasionally uses "negro" to describe some of my old schoolmates when he's asking what they're up to these days, the way one might use "Greek" or "Chinese." No malice intended. It's an outdated term, like "colored," but I don't see the NAACP rushing to change its name.

By: Cyde Weys

Cyde Weys — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:48:08 +0000

Yeah, you missed the part about a bunch of old white men from the south yucking it up over something with the word “negro” in it. This isn’t nouveau racism, it’s classical racism, like from the Civil Rights era, and easily identifiable as such. Go ask a black person what they think of this song.

By: drinian

drinian — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 04:26:16 +0000

Well, your post prompted me to finally go find an actual copy of the song to listen to. Have you?

And, I can’t really peg this as “racist.” It’s certainly not clever, witty, or even reasoned. But I see its point, and I see what they’re making fun of: the perception (at the time) that leaders of the black community were jealous of Obama, because he had succeeded, quickly, where they had failed; that somehow it makes one less “black” if they have not been mired in poverty.

Or did I miss something?